The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has recently issued a circular on the guidelines on operations and standards of electronic payment channels – Automatic Teller Machine operations (ATM) – in Nigeria.

In a circular issued on Tuesday, May 3, 2016, titled: “CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA GUIDELINES ON OPERATIONS OF ELECTRONIC PAYMENT CHANNELS IN NIGERIA”, the Apex Bank said:

The Standards – Standards on ATM Technology and Specification:

All ATMs shall be able to dispense all denominations of Naira. For deposit taking ATMs, acceptable denominations shall be displayed by the deployer.

No card scheme shall discriminate against any ATM owner or acquirer. Every card-scheme must publish for the benefit of every ATM owner or acquirer and the Central Bank of Nigeria, the requirements for acquiring ATM transactions under the card scheme.

No ATM owner or acquirer shall discriminate against any card scheme or issuer.

Stand-alone or closed ATMs are not allowed. ATMs should be situated in such a manner as to permit access at reasonable times. Access to these ATMs should be controlled and secured so that customers can safely use them.

All ATMs shall accept all cards issued in Nigeria under CBN regulations for any card-based value added service made available on the machine.

Cash retraction shall be disabled on all ATMs. Banks are to ensure that there is appropriate monitoring mechanism to determine failure to dispense cash. They also have to make sure that there is online monitoring mechanism to determine ATM vault cash levels

ATMs are not stocked with unfit notes.

Every ATM shall have cameras, which shall view and record all persons using the machines and every activity at the ATM, including but not limited to: card insertion, transaction selection, cash withdrawal, card taking, etc. However, such cameras should not be able to record the key strokes of customers using the ATM.

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